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Windows 7 for XP ProfessionalsUpdating Support Skills from XP to Windows 7by Bink.nu's Raymond Comvalius
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You can read the full Knowledge Base article at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957825
The entire Windows Home Server team would thank the people that have used our Connect site to submit bugs with detailed logs and "repro" steps to help the team understand issues with the product that are not easy to reproduce. The home server team has one of the oldest Connect sites dating back to October, 2005. But most importantly we have the 4th most active site due to the fact that we keep it open so people can continue to submit product suggestions and bug reports that are directly reviewed by the product team.
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We’ve been reading our mail and all the comments you’ve made on the recent Windows Live Hotmail updates. While the new Hotmail works well for most of our customers, we’ve also been hearing from many of you here on the blog and through Windows Live Support who’ve had trouble. We’re in the process of addressing all the feedback and wanted to give you an update on the changes we’re making.
Over the last few weeks we’ve rolled out fixes that resolve many of the issues you’ve reported. These include problems when using a larger text size in the browser, viewing your favorite contacts, accessing Hotmail from Firefox on Linux, and problems opening some messages. These fixes have now gone out to everyone, so you shouldn’t continue to see these problems.
Our next update, in mid-December, will address how scrolling works. We’re making the new Hotmail work more like the Classic version for those of you with the reading pane turned off. When we moved to the new version we optimized for screen resolutions that were 1024x768 and above. In smaller resolutions like 800x600, we’ve seen cases where the browser scroll bars overlap the message scroll bars, making it harder to move through your messages. Our next update will fix this problem, and we appreciate your patience as we continue to work on this.
The Web Platform Installer (Web PI) is a simple tool that installs Microsoft's entire Web Platform, including IIS7, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, SQL Server 2008 Express Edition and the .NET Framework. Using the Web Platform Installer’s user interface, you can choose to install either specific products or the entire Microsoft Web Platform onto your computer. The Web PI also helps keep your products up to date by always offering the latest additions to the Web Platform. New Updates! Now supporting Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, Web PI makes it easy to install and stay up-to-date with the Microsoft Web Platform. This updated release lets you install ASP.NET MVC, Visual Studio Tools for Silverlight, and much more!.................Continue At Source
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Seadragon Ajax brings Deep Zoom technology right to your own web page or blog, even if you're not a software developer. You may already be familiar with Deep Zoom technology--it's used in Photosynth and in Silverlight. It enables you to smoothly zoom into extreme close-ups of your images, regardless of the size of the screen or bandwidth of the network you're on.
Seadragon Ajax makes it easy for you to embed Deep Zoom Images right on your site or blog. Or, you can download the free Deep Zoom Composer to create a Deep Zoom Image that you can store on your own site. See how easy it is......................Continue At Source
Families are sticking together and searching for better entertainment value this holiday.
A tough economy is casting a shadow over many people’s gift-giving list right now, providing a question mark as to how they will spend their hard-earned cash this holiday season. To better understand how America’s shopping and entertainment habits are evolving this year, Microsoft Corp. collaborated with Ipsos1and StrategyOne2 to produce the Xbox 360 Holiday Entertainment Survey. It’s no surprise that the majority of respondents admitted to being more cautious about how they will spend their hard-earned cash.
Some of the key findings include these:
60 percent of respondents are planning to stay at or close to home to save money over the holidays
71 percent are looking for one gift to bring the family together
89 percent are hunting for gifts that keep on giving
81 percent of adults in households with children are looking for gifts that provide entertainment while staying home this year2
86 percent of young adults hope to receive at least one video game this year
40 percent of adults will visit the movie theater less than last year
Almost Everyone Will Stay Home for the Holidays
This year, the home is the destination for holiday entertainment with three out of five Americans anticipating spending Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year’s Eve at home to save money. In other words, many families will spend their holiday season in the living room, looking for ways to be entertained economically...........................Continue At Source
Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) resolves issues that were found in Exchange Server 2007 SP1 since the software was released. This update rollup is highly recommended for all Exchange Server 2007 SP1 customers.For a list of changes that are included in this update rollup, see KB953467.
Finaly the Windows Server 2008 CCR cluster OAB copy fix
The rumors were true: Microsoft has hired away from Yahoo Sean Suchter, Vice President of Yahoo’s Search Technology.
Microsoft issued on November 20 the following statement, attributable to Satya Nadella, the Senior Vice President of Search, Portal and Advertising:
“We are very pleased to confirm that Sean Suchter will be joining Microsoft as the GM (General Manager) of our Silicon Valley Search Technology Center, working on Live Search. Sean will report into Harry Shum when he starts work on December 22. We look forward to welcoming him to Microsoft at that time.”
As All Things D’s Kara Swisher blogged earlier this week, Suchter was an important contributor to Yahoo’s search effort.
The announcement of IE8 Beta 2 started an important and public phase of the product development cycle getting broad public feedback. The team is providing detailed information and answering questions about the product in many different places. Now’s a good time to talk about what comes next.
Since the release of Beta 2, the team has been absorbed in the data we get from real people about the product. We have combed through instrumentation of over 20 million IE sessions and hundreds of hours of usability lab sessions. Together with IE MVPs, we have scrutinized thousands of threads from user forums and examined the issues that people are raising (not to mention all the times users opt to “Report a Webpage Problem…”). We have also spent hundreds of hours listening and answering questions in meetings with partners and other important organizations. We simply could not deliver IE8 the way our customers and developers want us to without all this information. We also received a lot of feedback about how we transitioned from the IE7 beta releases to the IE7 final release, and as a result, we want to be clear about the plan for IE8.
We will release one more public update of IE8 in the first quarter of 2009, and then follow that up with the final release. Our next public release of IE (typically called a “release candidate”) indicates the end of the beta period. We want the technical community of people and organizations interested in web browsers to take this update as a strong signal that IE8 is effectively complete and done. They should expect the final product to behave as this update does.
The System Center Operations Manager team is excited to announce the availability of the Operations Manager 2007 R2 Beta, which is ready for you to download through Microsoft Connect today!
As announced and demonstrated by Brad Anderson at TechEd EMEA 2008 earlier this month, Operations Manager 2007 R2 will deliver key new capabilities including cross-platform monitoring, service-level tracking, new and updated monitor templates (including process, OLE DB, NT Service, and Unix/Linux log file), and much more!
Downloading the Operations Manager 2007 R2 Beta
Zune, Microsoft's digital music and entertainment service, today announced landmark agreements with major and independent music labels to bring significant new value to the subscription music model. The Zune Pass subscription service currently gives consumers on-demand access to millions of tracks for $14.99 per month. Starting today subscribers will also get to select 10 tracks per month to keep and add them to their permanent collection (an estimated $10 value).
Agreements have been signed between Microsoft and EMI Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group (UMG) and Warner Music Group, as well as independent distributors INgrooves, Independent Online Distribution Alliance and The Orchard. The Orchard delivers digital music, video and brand services globally, and represents labels including Barsuk Records (Nada Surf) and Fania Records (Hector Lavoe, Celia Cruz). IODA represents labels including Arts & Crafts (Broken Social Scene, The Stills) and Ghostly International (Matthew Dear, School of Seven Bells). The new enhanced subscription model came about as a result of close collaboration with all of these companies.
Zune Pass subscribers will have the added benefit of retaining digital rights management (DRM)-free MP3 tracks from Sony BMG and UMG, in addition to MP3 tracks from EMI Music, Warner Music Group and a large portion of the independent music labels. With the addition of tracks from UMG and Sony BMG, Zune will soon offer over 90 percent of its music in the MP3 format.
“The way people consume music has changed. With the shift to digital from CDs, it is more challenging than ever to offer the right mix of deep content, music discovery and economic value,” said Chris Stephenson, general manager of global marketing for Zune at Microsoft. “People want the freedom to listen to whatever they want across millions of songs, combined with the confidence that they can keep their favorite tracks forever.”
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In addition to continuously updating Live Search and trying to get developers on board with new features, Microsoft is also promoting Live Search via various deals and giveaways. The latest is Big Ticket Search, and surprisingly it's only for Canadians. Every search on the site gives you a chance to win a prize (1,488 total prizes):
Microsoft has announced unofficially that the company is moving away from the Windows Live OneCare product for consumers. On the OneCare weblog, the OneCare team states the following:
In hopes of getting more consumers protected, this week, Microsoft announced that it will offer a new security solution to consumers at no cost beginning in the second half of calendar year 2009. This new offering will focus on getting the majority of consumers the essential protection they need by providing comprehensive, real-time anti-malware protection, covering such threats as viruses, spyware, rootkits, trojans, and other emerging threats, in a single, focused solution. In order for us to focus on delivering this new security solution to millions of customers around the world, we have decided to phase out Windows Live OneCare and will discontinue retail sales of Windows Live OneCare subscription service beginning June 30, 2009.
In hopes of getting more consumers protected, this week, Microsoft announced that it will offer a new security solution to consumers at no cost beginning in the second half of calendar year 2009. This new offering will focus on getting the majority of consumers the essential protection they need by providing comprehensive, real-time anti-malware protection, covering such threats as viruses, spyware, rootkits, trojans, and other emerging threats, in a single, focused solution.
In order for us to focus on delivering this new security solution to millions of customers around the world, we have decided to phase out Windows Live OneCare and will discontinue retail sales of Windows Live OneCare subscription service beginning June 30, 2009.
A free solution is in the making and will feature all kinds of protection for free for consumers possibly replacing the need for an expensive piece of anti-virus protection software. Microsoft will support it's current clientbase as long as their subscription is valid. All retail stops in the summer of 2009. For more faq and information on this topic, see the source.
This is a heads up that Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 is in the final stages of getting released and should be out in a couple of days. The next step for the Exchange team will be to release the Update Rollup onto the Download Center and then publish it to Microsoft Update. Microsoft Update publishing will happen 2-3 weeks after the Download Center publishing, due to internal policies and processes. We will let you know when this happens.
Regarding the overall patching experience, we have addressed the issue of Exchange 2007 managed services might time out during certificate revocation checks. While we will have a full list of issues fixed when the Rollup releases, some of major issues are:
PS. The "CDCR" listed in titles above stands for "Critical Design Change Request" - as in actual design changes that we took on in this Rollup (we usually take on a few of those in every Rollup)
A weird Microsoft.com download page was found on the internet today:
File Name: Battlestar Galactica - Seasons, Episodes.docx Version: 3 Date Published: 11/17/2008 Language: English Download Size: 1 KB - 22
Clearly it's a test download but still good fun.
Microsoft has revealed that the next version of Internet Explorer Mobile will only be released on new models. There will be no official way for current users to get this upgrade.
This new version of the default Windows Mobile web browser was announced last spring, and Microsoft promised to introduce it before the end of this year. Which it is, but only on a few devices as they launch.
The news that users are expected to buy a new smartphone or handheld in order to get Internet Explorer Mobile 6 came from a member of the Windows Mobile team on this group's official blog:
Regarding making IE Mobile available as a separate download or update, the rich media experiences that IE Mobile 6 enables require more powerful, advanced devices. That is why it will not be available as an upgrade or direct download for current phones, but rather will be made available on new phones.